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Analysts welcome national security plan

Max Blenkin

Security and strategic academics have welcomed the government's new national security strategy with leading analyst Professor Paul Dibb describing it as highly focused, disciplined and concentrating on the hard-edged risks.

But the opposition said the new national security strategy was nothing more than an attempt by Prime Minister Julia Gillard to gain some desperately needed credibility in a policy area she has completely ignored throughout her leadership.

The strategy, launched by Ms Gillard at the Australian National University (ANU) on Wednesday, outlines a series of national security objectives, risks and priorities.

That includes enhanced regional engagement, an integrated cyber policy and effective partnership to maximise the return on the considerable taxpayer investment in national security.

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Prof Dibb, emeritus professor of strategic studies at ANU, said Australia wasn't the US or China and he had long argued its security focuses should be few in number, around six, and expressed in priority order.

"And that's what you've got. It focuses not on the soft end of security but on the hard-edged risks of threat, the capacity to defend our people, the vital infrastructure and things like cyber," he said.

"It doesn't do the sort of rather all-inclusive concept that (former prime minister) Kevin Rudd went on with, like human security, water security, food security and hugging trees."

Former army chief Peter Leahy, head of the Canberra University National Security Institute, welcomed the strategy.

"It's positive that we have a statement of priorities. We have a statement of risks but there will be more work required around that risk area," he said.

But Prof Leahy believes the allocation of resources in a time of financial stringency will still be a bunfight.

"That will require real leadership from the national security committee," he said.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said Australia had more pressing security concerns than those posed by the rise of China.

"Inevitably as China becomes more economically powerful, it will become more militarily powerful, and that does raise some issues," he said.

But in the end, the most important security threats we face are Islamist terrorism and an unstable world, he said.

Shadow Attorney-General George Brandis said Ms Gillard's strategy was more meaningless platitudes rather than a clear and costed outline for Australia's defence and security needs.

"The prime minister acknowledges that border security has to be one of the pillars of Australia's national security, but Labor's failure in this area has been spectacular with over 32,000 arrivals on over 550 boats," he said in a statement.

Australian Greens leader Christine Milne said the strategy failed to take into account the risks to regional security posed by global warming.

"What we're going to see is displacement of large amounts of people around the world that are going to cause then regional conflicts. We really have to get across global warming," she said.